


Familiar

by WaltzQueen



Category: Deltarune (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Metafiction, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 02:15:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16525364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaltzQueen/pseuds/WaltzQueen
Summary: Everything is so different,yet so familiar.





	Familiar

Kris has never experienced sleep paralysis but they know exactly what it's like. it's like this. Being awake but your body isn't. Kris sighs. They'd been having too good of a run lately. The streak had to end. They watch as their own body is puppeted across the town, through a world of make believe, and back into the house as if putting away a toy.

All the while, Kris endures as something that is too big and too alien looking out into the world through them, like the entire sun, shining out through the windows of a tiny house.

 

You, however, are having a blast! It's a whole new world!

You see your old friends for the first time all over again. They're all different, so similar but so new. The change is exciting. You had discovered all the changes in the last world. You tore it in half to see how its insides, its complicated pieces and complex circuits, fit together in an endless waterfall of cause and effects. You lovingly put it all back together once you discovered every pattern it could make, every tessellation of hope and despair a joy to behold. then you had loved it until the metaphorical eyes fell off. When it seemed about to fall apart you did it again and again until it was as natural as a smile on a warm summer day. Now you have a new world to explore. You're not sure you'll get bored enough to ever do again what you did the last time. While you loved discovering it, you hated the results. This time you take it as gently as you do now, not as harshly as you did then.

You ACT instead of FIGHT. You create clever paths around arguments, drawing in friends wherever you go. You extend a hand in friendship to those that offered you harm. You offer cute flirts and silly jokes to relieve the tension. You dodge around traps and solved puzzles. The puzzles were the same as always, but the traps felt new. Even when you fail and have to restart from a save the smile on your face could shine through your anger or disappointment. 

You aren't smiling all the time, though. You frown and grimace as you realize that your favorite couple isn't together. Your good friend isn't a shining star, unable to have the body he always wanted; that has you frowning, too. You want to change that. You know you can, but your options are limited right now. You'd have to come back to make your friends' lives better. You consider coming back to this all tomorrow. Perhaps it would be best to end the day and see about tomorrow? You move to go back to the house when you notice exactly who you're looking at.

You've been doing this for so long, so effortlessly, that you forget just what you're doing until the endless joy ride encounters an obstacle. It's not enough to stop you, nothing ever is, but it's enough to jar you uncomfortably. Sans is that obstacle.  
You know Sans, inside and out. You know Sans more than his brother knows him, most likely. You were so interested in Sans. You poured over every silly or off putting joke, every threat and twitch of his skeletal hand, all the things you could find in his bedroom. Sans was a friendly grin  and a deep voice, or the shadow at the end of a long hallway, stretched across the golden tiles.Most importantly Sans was familiar.

Same beat up hoodie. Same grimy slippers. Same wisecracking grin. Birds were singing . The sun was shining. It was actually Sans! Or at least it had the possibility of actually being Sans. Sans knew about timelines and alternate realities. This realty had been different enough to concern you, but it would be okay because at least Sans was here, and he'd know. You're so excited that you run over and with a grin. You almost want to tackle Sans with a hug but that would surely smack him against  what is obviously Grillby's, with the name scratched off. He only has one HP and it would suck for the both of you if you restarted your acquaintance with an impromptu murder attempt.

Sans is nonchalant in his usual manner. Standing there, ignoring what is patently obvious to you.

He responds to your approach with *look who's walkin around. how are ya, kid?

It's far from the kind of response you expected, considering the last time you saw  him he was riding a bkie on the road, alongside his brother's red car. But it's just casual, familiar and lackadaisical enough that you  are overcome with joy because only Sans would be that nonchalant about this whole thing. Still, you're so happy that the first words you have for him are GREAT TO SEE YOU AGAIN. You never even consider who you  are supposed to be.

 

Kris can feel whoever or whatever is in there with them, rubbing against them in all the wrong ways. When Kris eats a Chocodiamond something alien and awful complains that it isn't one of those spicy chocolates or one with mint.Kris watches their hands rifle through the crayons in the drawer, lovingly collecting all the red ones together into a pile.It completely ignores Kris' annoyance about the lack of green. It doesn't understand Kris' ball of junk-two paperclips from the divorce papers, a bit of fluff from Asreil's brush, a pencil stub from their favorite piano tutor's last session with Kris, a cool looking shard of rock, the rubber bands that Kris had gone in Mr Gerson's office to get when they discovered him dead- and almost throws it away, but Kris holds on. It's their stuff, it's everything important to them that they have left. Whatever it is reconsiders, perhaps sensing Kris' despondence at the thought of loosing all of their things. It doesn't throw their things away. They're relieved that at least what ever is moving them around isn't pointlessly cruel, just powerful and unlikely to notice. The relief is back to bitterness.

Kris is brave enough to deal with watching their helpless form stroll around town, spewing unnecessary words into people's faces, but they don't have the heart to appreciate how kind and friendly their neighbors can be when they're talked to. Kris tries to ignore how their body and voice stick their nose into Mr Holiday's business. Kris was used to hospitals and illness. It was a part of life and Kris went there regularly to play the piano, a comfort to the plagued and dying. Whatever is in them jitters nervously around the hospital, seemingly upset with even being there, despite it forcing them inside and into peoples' rooms. Kris' already withered heart crumples a bit when Mr Holiday doesn't even notice the discomfort. At least Kris is there , sitting in the passenger seat of their own body, long enough to feel  that overpowering thing finally get a taste of its own medicine when its swollen elation collapses into dread and sadness.

Kris doesn't care about this monster on a personal level. They couldn't care where Sans moved in from or why they were such a source of anguish for whatever had hi-jacked them. All Kris cared about was breathing. Steady-one, two- in and out, long enough to ride it out. These things never stay for more than a day or so. Kris has done it before, they can do it again, they just have to be brave. It's easier to face it when you know the shape of the thing.

 

You go to bed.

 

And then their body is moving again. But the moving is different, jerky and fitful and not at all like the smooth turn of joints and press of muscles that has dragged them though the day. Kris' body flies from the bed, landing face first on the carpet. It rises on hands and knees and slowly shuffle walks to the center of the room.

You're alarmed, eyes wide with fear and confusion as a hand rips into a chest and pulls out a soul. Red. Yours. You struggle a bit but the crushing grip is a retaliation you're not prepared to deal with! You had been so excited to see something new that you hadn't really considered what else could be new. A new way to solve a puzzle, or dodge a trap, or to die. The knife, the Smile, the eye snapping open at long last with the sound of a shattering soul.

You know them. You had been seeking out some one who could recognize you all day. Someone who you knew and who would know you the same way you knew them. You hadn't considered you'd been looking at them all day.

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever suspect the Player Charcter knows the Plaer is there?
> 
> Asreil:"Dont you have anything better to do?"


End file.
